Odd how things work out

Cowpens National Monument

I have spent a good deal of the last month on the road gathering information for the website.  Most of my travels were in and around Virginia so naturally there was lots of Civil War history to learn about.  As I was sifting through all my material I became very aware of this.

I don't want the website to be just about the Civil War, although it is of huge fascination to me.  As I was beginning my journey back home via Atlanta I kept scanning the tan signs along the road in hopes of finding a new location to study.  While going through South Carolina I remembered that the Revolutionary War battle of Cowpens was fought there.  Sadly, I remembered this because of the movie The Patriot(the historian in me cringes), but nonetheless it sparked my interest when the movie came out.  For those of you not very aware of Cowpens, it was a battle in which the tide of the the war began to turn in favor of the Americans in South Carolina.

Upon entering South Carolina I stopped at their Welcome Center.  Yeah, I have this weird thing about stopping at the Welcome Center in each state.  Kinda my own little OCD thing.  Anyway, Cowpens had flickered in my mind as I was driving but for some reason I really thought that it was located closer to the coastline which was at least a few hours away from where I was.  It definitely would not have fit into my itinerary since I was supposed to be in Atlanta in just a few hours.

Little Paul with Cornwallis

I guess my intuition kicked in because as I was leaving the Welcome Center it just dawned on me to plug the location of Cowpens into my GPS.  Luckily I did, because as it turns out, the battlefield was only about 15 miles away!  My historical heart leapt for joy because it has always been a place I wanted to visit.  To make matters even better, there were all sorts of special events going on that day because they were having a special fireworks display that evening.  Not only did I get to tour the battlefield, i also got to see a firing demonstration and had the chance to meet a man portraying General Cornwallis.


Pretty amazing how things can turn out huh?  I shot a little mini field trip there that will go up on our website in the near future so be sure to check back.